


Things (The "Stuff" Remix)

by Syrena_of_the_lake



Category: Star Wars Legends: Thrawn Trilogy - Timothy Zahn, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Remix, Wretched Melodramatic Space Trash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-09
Updated: 2018-09-16
Packaged: 2019-07-08 09:34:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15927701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syrena_of_the_lake/pseuds/Syrena_of_the_lake
Summary: In which Luke does his best impression of a hermit crab, Mara doesn't give a womp rat's rear end about personal space, and the melodramatic space-trashy adventures of Duke and Tara interrupt the peaceful silence of Ahch-To. Also in which Luke and Mara drink too much, exchange insults and innuendo, watch questionable entertainment and get up to even more questionable activities.





	1. It's not breaking and entering if there's no door

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rthstewart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rthstewart/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Stuff](https://archiveofourown.org/works/419250) by [rthstewart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rthstewart/pseuds/rthstewart). 



> Dear Ruth, I set myself the impossible task of remixing _Stuff_ — at least a small piece of it — in the hopes that both the specter of its past and the vision of this AU future will make you smile. (That, or grimace at the horrible puns. I’ll take what I can get.)  
>  In my remix, I decided to give into temptation and throw Callista out the airlock. Then, since I was at it, I decided to bring the whole thing into the Sequel Trilogy era. On rereading Stuff, the parallels with _The Last Jedi_ really struck me, with regard to Luke’s depression and self-isolation. We all know Mara wouldn’t let that nonsense persist for long. And that got me wondering... what else might change?

**Prologue**

“This is the stupidest idea you’ve ever had,” Mara declared, “and this from the guy who compared the Death Star to womp rats.”

Clearly, that was not the objection he expected her to make. Luke sputtered a moment before responding. “I’m leaving a map!” he protested. “And besides, it wasn’t the whole Death Star — just the exhaust port. And that _was_ about the size of a womp rat.” Mara smiled at his petulant response, and immediately Luke’s expression shuttered. “And it’s not a debate,” he added flatly. 

 _Damn_. For a moment, she thought she had gotten through to him. Fine. She was a Master Trader, she could compromise. “At least take Artoo.” The little droid would look after Luke despite himself, and could probably be persuaded to keep in touch with Leia...

“No.”

And that was that. Mara could try to make him see sense, but she refused to plead with him. She wondered if Luke would open himself to the Force long enough to get where he was going without pulverizing his ship against an asteroid. It was unnerving to feel him so closed off. She hadn’t realized how accustomed she had become to sensing his calm, controlled presence in the back of her mind. Now he was locked down so tightly that he felt parsecs away even standing right next to her.

“You could stay here,” Mara offered to her own surprise. “Verrat is so isolated by the asteroid belt that hardly anyone ever comes here. Even I only make two trips a year.” She was horrified to hear herself babbling. “The northern continent is sparsely settled, I’m sure we could find something—”

“No.” Stang, but he sounded so _cold._  This wasn’t the Luke Skywalker she knew. Their dance around each other was delicate at the best of times, but she didn’t know how to even begin to reach this cold stranger standing beside her, staring up at the sky as if all the answers he sought were up there among the spinning, hurtling asteroids.

“Skywalker... Luke, please.” She didn’t even know what she was asking. But she knew the answer before he said it.

“I’m sorry, Mara.” 

They didn’t say goodbye. They never had before, Mara realized with a frown, but this time was different. Always before, she had been the one to leave first. Always before, Luke had waited patiently — sometimes too patiently — for the cycle to begin again. Always before, the Force had pulsed with the knowledge that they would spin back inevitably into each other’s orbit. It had made them both complacent, Mara thought now, the thought that there would always be a next time. Another time, another place, another promise of exploring the  nebulous but undeniable connection between them.

But as Luke lowered the canopy of his X-wing, his astromech conspicuously absent behind him, Mara felt only an emptiness where always before there had been assurance. Emptiness, and a sudden fear that she would never see him again.

The anger she had tried so hard to suppress flared again. 

She was tempted to turn her back as he flew away, but she didn’t. Luke Skywalker had already turned his back on everyone else. If the only thing she could do for him was to refrain from doing the same, then Mara would watch the contrails left by his S-foils until the last traces dissipated with the dawn.

As the lonely sun rose over the fields of Verrat, Mara looked down at the mem-stick Luke had left with her.

A map, he’d said. She had seen the map, and it was incomplete. It showed only a nameless system, one planet among billions, one star among trillions. A breadcrumb in a galaxy of breadcrumbs. Like if he gave her the whole map, she’d — what? Take off and follow him into exile? Mara stuffed the mem-stick in her pocket and scowled.  _Fat chance, Skywalker_. 

Mara Jade didn’t follow anyone, anywhere. Not anymore.

 

* * *

**Ch. 1  It’s not breaking and entering if there’s no door**

_You do not have to be good._  
_You do not have to walk on your knees_  
_for a hundred miles through the desert repenting._  
_You only have to let the soft animal of your body  
_ _love what it loves._

 _— Mary Oliver, “Wild Geese”_  


_The world was on fire and no one could save me but you._  
_It's strange what desire will make foolish people do._  
_I never dreamed that I'd meet somebody like you._  
_And I never dreamed that I'd lose somebody like you.  
_ _No, I don't want to fall in love... with you._

_— Chris Isaac, "Wicked Game"_

 

“Solo,” Mara groaned into the holo screen, “you had better have an awfully good reason for calling this early.”

“Maybe I’m planetside and it isn’t early here.”

Mara opened her eyes long enough to glare at him, and then she blinked in surprise. “Where’s your ship?” she blurted.

Han's scowl was only slightly distorted by static. “I’m on it.”

“That looks like a garbage scow.” Mara’s forehead furrowed in confusion. “I mean, the Falcon _looks_ like a garbage scow, but that thing looks like it really _is_ a garbage scow.”

Han stabbed a finger at the viewscreen. “It’s none of your damn business,” he growled.

“Neither is this,” retorted Mara, reaching to flip a switch and end the transmission.

“Wait! Just... wait.” Han scrubbed a hand over his face. He still looked awful, but less shell-shocked than the last time Mara had seen him. Like the grief of losing his son to the Dark Side had settled into the crags of his face and the gravel of his voice.

He looked old.

Mara waited.

“I lost the _Falcon_ , okay?”

A mournful warble from the background confirmed that Chewbacca, at least, was still around. Good. Solo needed someone to look after him. And Force knew Mara was tired of cleaning up other people’s messes.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Mara said, and meant it. If she lost the _Jade’s Fire_ , a piece of her would die with it. Nothing could replace an old friend, that first freedom, the one home that stayed with you. “You want me to find it?”

Han brightened. “Yes — I mean, no, that’s not why I’m calling, but if you happen to hear anything...”

Mara relented. “I’ll let you know. So if it’s not about the _Falcon_ , why are you calling?”

“It’s about Luke,” he began, but Mara cut him off.

“He made his own colossally stupid decision to hide in some Force-forsaken corner of the galaxy," she snapped. “He can stay there and rot for all I care.”

“We need him.” Han was somber. “Not much I should say on an open channel—“

“It’s encrypted.”

“— but things aren’t going so well. The whole galaxy knows that. We need Luke back.”

 _Maybe not in the shape he’s probably in_ , Mara thought to herself. _If he’s even still alive._

Han looked closely at her. “But it’s more than that. Leia needs her brother. She — _we_ just want him to come home.”

“So why don’t you go and tell him?” 

Han rolled his eyes. “Because _I_ can’t find him.”

“What makes you think I can?” Feeling strangely guilty, Mara thought of the mem-stick. For three years, it had been stowed away somewhere she knew no one would ever look. Even better, she knew Skywalker would abhor her hiding place. Men were so squeamish about some things. 

“You have a connection,” Han said seriously. “You can find him.”

“He’s Leia’s brother,” Mara retorted. She didn’t like thinking about her tangled connection to Luke Skywalker, for reasons she also preferred not thinking about. “She has a closer connection than I do. Why doesn’t she do it?”

For the first time, Han looked genuinely angry instead of irritated. “You think she hasn’t tried? Every time she opens herself to the Force it’s a risk. She does it anyway, but wherever Luke is, she can’t reach him.”

Reflexively, Mara reached out. She distantly felt the small but bright glimmer that was Leia, and was startled to feel something else: a seething, searching menace lurking among the stars. _Ben?_

The bundle of pain and rage coiled, lashed out at her. Mara gasped and shrank away, closing her mind and senses off from the contact.

Han closed his eyes in pain, as if he too had somehow felt it. “Leia can’t,” he said softly. “She just… can’t. Please, Mara.”

Helplessly, Mara nodded. 

Han exhaled. “Thanks. I owe you one.”

Mara smiled weakly. “You owe me a lot more than that, Solo. One of these days I might just decide to collect, and then what will you do?”

“Use my boyish charm to talk you out of it.”

Chewbacca’s rumbling laugh drifted from somewhere offscreen.

Mara shook her head. “Leia was right, you really are delusional.” 

Han shrugged and gave a ghost of his trademark grin.

“So,” said Mara, “my job is to find Luke and find the _Falcon.”_ Sheticked the items off on her fingers. 

“Without getting killed," Han added.

“Preferably. Anything else?” Mara asked, recovering her sarcasm.

She wasn’t really expecting a response, but Solo surprised her again. “Yeah, now that you mention it. There’s an intelligence agent missing — let me rephrase that. There’s an agent missing, and he has some intel we need.”

Mara arched an eyebrow. “Why the change in terminology?”

Han snorted. “Because intelligence has very little to do with it. We’re scraping the bottom of the barrel here, Mara. This guy’s running lights are too dim to attract mynocks. But whatever he’s got, we need.”

Mara rolled her eyes. “Missing Jedi, missing ship, missing agent, got it. That’s three more you owe me, Solo.”

“Don’t you traders do package deals?”

“Tell Leia I don’t give discounts,” she retorted automatically. 

Han tugged at his collar. “I, uh, will when I see her.”

Mara looked at him sharply. Even through the staticky connection (on his end, naturally; the _Fire’s_ comms equipment was top-notch),  he was visibly uncomfortable. “When will that be?” she asked. Even as she did so, she wondered why. She liked Han and Leia, considered them some of her few friends, and thought the same was true for them. But their marriage was none of her business.

Han shrugged listlessly. From offscreen, a large hairy paw shoved Han in the shoulder. He yelped. “Soon, okay? I’ll see her soon. I mean, I’d like to have word about Luke first...”

Mara scowled at him. “I don’t know how long this will take, so don’t make me your excuse for putting your marriage on hold.” She didn’t speak much Shyriiwook, but she was pretty sure that Chewbacca’s vehement growl was an affirmative. “See if you can talk some sense into him, Chewie,” she said, ignoring Han’s affronted look and talking over his objections. “I’ll have enough to deal with bringing Skywalker to heel.” Reluctantly, she added, “I’ll let you know what I learn when it’s safe to comm.” She hated working on other people’s timetables. “Take care of yourselves.”

“You too,” said Han gruffly.

As soon as he signed off, Mara let her head thunk onto the console. There was no backing out now. She pulled the mem-stick out of her pocket. Three standard days ago she had retrieved it from its hiding place among certain unmentionable supplies. At the time, she hadn’t paused to examine her motivations aside from acceding to the nudging of the Force with ill grace and ill-concealed relief. She couldn’t quite believe Solo’s call was a coincidence. Mara smirked. Maybe he was Force-sensitive after all. She’d enjoy holding the possibility over his head, at any rate.

But Han was right. Skywalker had been missing for far too long, and the galaxy was spinning off its axis. Something had to be done, and once again Mara would be the one to do it.

“Figures,” she muttered to herself, but she couldn’t muster much in the way of righteous indignation. After all, if anyone was qualified to hunt down Luke Skywalker, it was her. Mara had already spent years of her life trying to track him down and kill him. If this trip proved as aggravating as she expected, it would seem just like old times.

She plugged the data stick into the holo projector and the incomplete map sprang to life, the cockpit awash in its blue glow. Mara touched the lightsaber on her hip. It had been made by the wrong Skywalker, but maybe it would help anyway.

She closed her eyes, stilled her breathing and sought the mind she had once known almost as well as her own. 

 

Her thoughts spiraled into the blackness between stars. 

Time and distance held no meaning. 

She revolved with entire worlds. She orbited distant suns. She drifted with nebulas, shied away from black holes, skirted the edges of hyperspace lanes.

Alone.

She brushed by countless minds that were not the one she sought. 

A vision stretched between star systems: a girl’s outstretched hand, a familiar lightsaber, a metal hand resting on the dome of an astromech, a burning school, a burning blade, burning suns in an empty sky.

Mara lost herself in the void.

 

Hours later, she crawled into bed trying to soothe the frayed tatters of her nerves with a litany of curses that would make even Solo blush. Mara focused on her irritation, using it like a candle to push back the darkness that threatened to engulf her.

She had tested the very limits of her connection with the Force, using every trick she’d ever learned — including one from Palpatine that left her feeling oily and nauseated, but no closer to her goal.

She couldn’t find Luke. _Anywhere_.

Mara squeezed her eyes shut, ground her face into her pillow and forced herself to face the only remaining alternatives. Either Luke Skywalker was dead, or he had closed himself off from the Force entirely. Both thoughts pained her even more than she had expected.

“Damn you, Skywalker.” The mumbled curse fell from her lips like a prayer.

 

Mara woke screaming.

The afterimage of her dream hovered on the bulkhead, cast in the green light of her blade. Her bare metal hand clenched into a fist as she prepared to strike down the defenseless boy in his bed—

Mara gasped and hit the light switch. “It’s not real,” she said aloud, even as she realized whose dream it was.

“Real enough,” responded a grave voice, and Mara almost fell out of bed. The voice was not Luke’s. Nor was the pale, shining apparition standing in her quarters. “Hello, Mara Jade,” he said. “You probably don’t recognize me. Honestly, I think I’d be insulted if you did.” 

Mara could hear her heart pounding in her ears. “Vader,” she said, her voice cool.

“How did you know?” The ghost of Anakin Skywalker looked affronted. 

“The cape,” said Mara. “I only knew three people who never went anywhere without one. You don’t look anything like Lando, and Orson Krennic was too stuffy to show up in my bedroom without an invitation.”

Anakin laughed aloud. “Fair point.”

“What the kriff are you doing here?” Mara wrapped herself in indignation like a cloak. “Shouldn’t you be off knocking sense into your son? Or your grandson, for that matter?”

She could feel his wince through the Force, and almost repented of her harsh words. Then again, this was Vader. Surely he deserved more punishment than she could mete out.

“You think I haven’t tried?” Anakin demanded. “Ben doesn’t listen to me. Oh, he talks to me all the kriffing time—”

“Are Force ghosts allowed to swear?” Mara wondered.

“— but he never listens to my replies. It’s maddening!” Anakin tilted his head, listening to something only he could hear. “Yes, Master, I’m fully aware of the irony.” 

Mara shook her head. This was too surreal. Could she still be dreaming?

Anakin grimaced. “Sorry, no such luck. That was Luke’s dream earlier, as I’m sure you guessed.”

“So he’s alive.” Mara wrapped her arms around herself to ward off the lingering chill of the dream. “Was that — were those his memories? Was it real?” She hated her voice for the slight tremor in it. 

Anakin sighed. “Obi-Wan would say it was true… from a certain point of view.”

Mara snorted. With that kind of instruction, it was no wonder Luke had become so wishy-washy. “But did it really happen?” she demanded.

“Not quite like that,” Anakin answered, confirming her suspicion. “That nightmare was born of guilt and grief and fear.”

“The Dark Side.”

The man who had been Darth Vader nodded. “Yes.”

“Has Luke...?” Mara couldn’t bring herself to articulate the words. If he had fallen to the Dark Side, she would have to confront him. _Skywalker_ , she thought, if _you make me kill you, I’ll_... She couldn’t even finish the threat in jest. 

But Anakin shook his head. “Luke has not followed the path I took, but his own is no less dangerous for it. He has closed himself off from the Force utterly.”

“Like a little boy,” said Mara, abruptly reminded of a young Ben Solo. “A little boy who stops up his ears and yells at the top of his lungs to keep from hearing anything at all.”

“You know us Skywalkers well,” Anakin said wryly. 

“More’s the pity,” muttered Mara.

“The Force is not easily silenced,” said Anakin, ignoring her interruption. “The harder Luke pushes it away, the more it pushes back. I hope you will prove equally stubborn on my son’s behalf. Love is a powerful counter to darkness.”

Mara stared in disbelief. “You have got to be kidding me.” A long-dead Dark Lord of the Sith was _not_ going to lecture her on love. For _Skywalker_ , of all people.

“Loneliness and despair are also of the Dark Side,” continued Anakin. “Trust me, I should know. Don’t let him push you away, Mara. More than his soul depends upon it.”

Mara had had enough. “Vader, get out of my head, out of my quarters and off my ship!”

Anakin folded his arms and appraised her. The body language was eerily familiar, and it only made Mara angrier. “You have something to say to your son, you can go tell him yourself,” she told him, her voice low with fury. “I’m not your messenger.”

“No, just my daughter’s.” He looked smug, damn him. He glanced at Mara’s bedside table. “Nice lightsaber, by the way. Present?”

“Vader,” growled Mara.

Anakin shook his head thoughtfully. “No, that’s not it. I don’t recall Darth Vader giving any presents. Must have been another Skywalker you’re thinking of.”

Mara was tempted to see if a Force ghost could still be vivisected. 

“So do you know why my son gave you my lightsaber?”

“No idea.”

Anakin smiled. “You should ask him when you see him. Tell him — oh, I forgot, you’re not a messenger.” He waved a ghostly hand. “Well, tell him what you like. You’ll have him at a disadvantage, you know, if you’re into that sort of thing—”

With an inarticulate cry of rage, Mara threw a boot at the incorporeal interloper. Even as it sailed through the space his presence occupied, he faded from sight. But his voice echoed in the empty room.

_Love my son well, Master Trader Jade. You’ll make a good Jedi yet._

It might have been a well-wishing, but Mara heard it only as a taunt. The other boot bounced off the bulkhead hard enough to break the heel.

“I’m itemizing that expense,” she growled. When no one answered, she snatched up her lightsaber and stalked to the cargo hold. After an early morning visit from Vader and the Dark Lord’s advice for the lovelorn, an hour or two of combat exercises was just what she needed to calm down. Then she could follow the trail Skywalker had inadvertently left for her.

 

This time, instead of sending her thoughts grasping out into the galaxy, Mara turned her mind inward. Reluctantly, she examined her memory of Luke’s nightmare. Dream-Luke loomed over a sleeping Ben Solo, his lightsaber ignited and his face twisted with fear and hate and loathing. Mara had never seen that expression on his face before, and that alone would have told her this vision was false.

Luke could never look at his nephew that way. 

The fear, though — that was real. Mara shivered. She had never met Kylo Ren, but she had known Ben Solo. She stifled the pang of loss that came with the memory of a small, serious boy reverently learning the _Fire’s_ controls. A crude but carefully colored drawing depicting her, the _Fire_ , and a jumble of scribbles that might have been crates or Stormtrooper bodies. She still had the drawing. 

Kylo Ren might claim to have killed Ben Solo, but nothing could obliterate his memory.

Mara let the sorrow drift away and settled deeper into herself. To her astonishment, she soon found a bright thread that felt like Luke. More brittle than she remembered, but unmistakably Luke. She imagined winding the thread around her fingers, even as her hands danced over the _Jade Fire’s_ controls. Each loop was another jump, another system, another parsec.

When she emerged from her trance, Mara blinked at the viewport, uncomprehending. A bright blue world hung in space before her eyes. Clouds swirled across its surface, tugging the bright thread in her mind. Mara’s stomach growled. _How many days has it been?_  

“First things first,” she told the thread and the waiting planet. “I’m not confronting Skywalker without a good meal and a nap.”

She parked in a high orbit and wondered if Luke had sensed her arrival or if was truly blind to the Force, like Vader had said. 

_Damn all Skywalkers._

Despite her misgivings, her sleep was sound and deep — and blessedly dreamless.

 

Twelve hours later, Mara landed on a remote island and contemplated the waves. Of course a desert-born farm boy would choose a world of water for his self-imposed exile. Mara breathed deeply. The salt air stirred her hair. Strange bird calls echoed among the glistening rocks. She had to hand it to Skywalker. As exiles went, this one wasn’t half bad.

An endless stone staircase wound its way up the crag. Mara followed it, past enclaves of chubby little birds, shale-stacked huts, and another path that felt like a shiver in the Force. Mara ignored all of it, following only the shining thread she could feel intertwining with the rocks underfoot.

Finally, the stair ended.

He stood with his back to her, his faded robes whipping in the wind.

Mara had weighed this moment in her mind a hundred times. She could say something gentle, forceful, stinging, prodding, sarcastic, forgiving. She could ask him why he gave her his father’s lightsaber. She could tell him about Vader’s visit, about Leia and Han’s disintegrating marriage, about galactic affairs, about the nightmare that had plagued them both.

Until then, Mara had trusted that she would know what to say when the moment came. But now she merely stood, her hair damp and windblown and frizzing in the humidity, her arms goose-pimpling in the cold, her voice caught in her throat.

In all of her imaginings, she had never thought that Luke would be the first to speak.

“Didn’t you see the sign?” He spoke without turning around to face her. His voice was rough with disuse.

“Sign?” Mara echoed dumbly.

“Visitors not welcome.”

“I think it blew away.” This was not going at all how it was supposed to. Trust Skywalker to throw a wrench in every last one of her plans.

He turned, and Mara’s eyes widened. His face was lined, haggard and half-obscured by a scraggly, salt-and-pepper beard. 

“Are you trying to become Obi-Wan?” Mara demanded, forgetting tact. They had never needed it between themselves before, so why start now? “I know there’s a certain amount of symmetry in the universe, but this is ridiculous.”

Luke’s lips thinned. At least, Mara thought they did. It was rather hard to tell with the beard. “What gives you the right to intrude?” His control was shaky; Mara could hear it in his voice. 

“It’s not breaking and entering if there’s no door,” she said softly. It was an old joke between them — a long-ago mission to apprehend a rogue Moff who had thought himself secure on his own private, semi-cloaked moon. It had been their first trip together as voluntary partners, after Luke had helped Mara silence the Emperor’s call from beyond the grave. The uncertainty of those early days came rushing back. She no longer wanted to kill him (except perhaps at moments like this), but they had lost the ease that had once characterized their — what, friendship? partnership? Certainly not relationship?

Luke sighed. Mara froze, wondering if he had heard her thoughts despite his severed connection to the Force. 

“I hope you like thala milk,” he said and walked away.

In her confusion, Mara followed.


	2. Aggressive negotiations don't always involve lightsabers

_Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.  
_ _Meanwhile the world goes on._

_— Mary Oliver, “Wild Geese **”**_

 

 _I don't know what I'm supposed to do,_  
_haunted by the ghost of you_  
_Oh, take me back to the night we met_  
_When the night was full of terror_  
_And your eyes were filled with tears_  
_When you had not touched me yet  
_ _Oh, take me back to the night we met._

_— Lord Huron, “The Night We Met”_

 

Mara watched Luke coax a stream of green milk out of a thala-siren cow and thought of a dozen salacious remarks, all equally inappropriate given the new chasm separating them.

Luke grunted. “No wisecrack about moof-milkers? Guess we’ve both changed.”

Disconcerted, Mara held her tongue. She remembered wishing Skywalker were less earnest, less eager to please and appease, less painfully innocent. She regretted ever thinking such a thing. _What happened to you?_  She extended a tendril of the Force and felt only a wall, dark and jagged like the cliffs. Luke didn’t even twitch at the attempted contact. He just shoved a warm thermos at Mara and downed his own. Green milk dribbled through his beard. It was childish and disgusting, and she didn’t bat an eye.  _You’ll have to do better than that, Skywalker._ She broadcast the thought, figuring that he couldn’t block her forever. If she had to wear him down one drop at a time like calcite formations in a cavern, then that’s what she would do.

Then Solo would owe her a mint.

“Charming,” Mara said aloud, rolling her eyes. “I’m so offended that I’ll just hop on my ship and leave — is that what you wanted? Nice try.”

Luke pushed past her rudely and grabbed a spear propped against a rock. For a wild moment, Mara thought he was going to spar with her, spear against lightsaber. But he only walked away, scrambling over the rocks as deftly as only a Jedi could — except that Mara felt no tingle of the Force. Nor did her danger sense flare when he leapt off the cliff.

Mara gasped.

Luke landed, a little awkwardly, on a rocky promontory ten meters away. Furious, Mara thought it would serve him right if he slipped. _Don’t make me catch you in a Force grip_ , she snarled at him.  _I won’t be gentle._ She thought she felt a little ripple of amusement, but she had to admit it could have been her own. The mental image of Luke Skywalker being dangled among the rocks like a Jedi-sized fishing lure was an attractive one.

The ripple echoed.

Mara swiftly shielded her thoughts. Maybe the way to get through to Luke wasn’t to hammer his finely honed sense of duty or layer on the guilt or have one of those uncomfortable talks that had defined their early days as something other than lethal adversaries. Maybe Luke had finally hit his limit with all of it. Maybe the way through was to meet him on neutral ground, to tease out the Luke she remembered in small ways. To learn about this new Luke and what made him tick.

Mara let her senses flow outward into the water. She found the fish Luke was attempting to spear, and nudged it. Even as his spear flashed into the water, the fish jumped — and smacked wetly across his face before falling back into the waves. Luke gaped at it in surprise, and Mara laughed aloud.

 _Nice try._ It could have been a mere echo of her own thought earlier, laced with a new wry humor. Mara hid her smile.

One droplet at a time. She could be patient, when the stakes were high enough.

 

Eight days later, the routine was wearing thin. Mara decided that while patience had its place, this wasn’t it. So that morning, she whittled herself a spear. When Luke appeared for his morning fishing trip, she attacked him.

His initial yelp was highly satisfying. His spear flicked up to meet hers a second too late. He slapped her thrust aside, fingered the new hole in his sleeve, and leveled a truly fearsome scowl at her. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he snarled.

“Sparring, Skywalker.” Mara was positively cheerful. _Finally_ , they were getting somewhere. “What do you think _you’re_ doing? Hiding? Moping? Moof milking?”

She ducked, parried and gracefully sidestepped a flurry of blows. She hadn’t had a decent sparring partner in ages. It would be more fun with lightsabers, of course, but she wasn’t so foolish as to try it while Luke was cut off from the Force. She didn’t want to chop off any more of his limbs. Not really.

After a few minutes of dancing around each other, it was like someone flipped a switch. Luke’s eyes lit as he warmed to the challenge. _Come on, farm boy,_  she goaded him, flicking mental rocks at his formidable shields. _Is that the best you can do, old man?_

“I’m no older than you are,” he growled, confirming her suspicions that Luke wasn’t  locked down quite as tightly as he tried to pretend. 

She’d always thought he had it in him.

Their impromptu sparring session came to an abrupt end when Mara’s new spear split in half with a loud crack. Half of it clattered harmlessly to the ground. The pointy half flew through an open doorway into a stone hut, eliciting a yelp from within.

Mara frowned at the butt of her spear. “Not very hardy driftwood.”

Luke rolled his eyes. “Not every inanimate object can be turned into a successful projectile weapon, Mara.”

“Actually, it worked fine as a projectile.” Guiltily, Mara glanced at the stone hut. A rubbery-skinned caretaker glared back and shook the broken spear in one finned fist. “Besides,” Mara said, kicking Luke’s foot, “yours seems in pretty good shape.”

“I distilled resin from my X-wing’s hydraulic fluid and used it as a protective coating.”

What with his newly gravelly voice and that infernal beard, Mara couldn’t even tell whether he was serious. Not that it mattered. The important thing was that he was actually talking with her.

As if he had heard her unspoken thought, Luke’s shoulders slumped in resignation. “Why are you here, Mara? What do you want from me?”

“You ask those questions like they have the same answer.” She wiped strands of sweaty hair off her forehead, sat down on a rock and thought longingly of the showers and cushy chairs aboard the _Jade’s Fire_. But she couldn’t have this conversation there. The slick rocks and tidal pools were as close as they could get to neutral ground. 

“Han asked me to find you,” Mara began, “but that’s not why I came.”

Luke sat on the ground at her feet. “Go on.”

“I saw your dream, Luke.” His name fell awkwardly from her lips, which made the next part even harder to say. “And I saw your father.”

Mara watched Luke carefully for some kind of reaction, half-expecting the ground underneath her to rumble and crack with the strain. 

“I see,” Luke said, his face impassive. 

Mara’s temper surged. What did she have to do to get a reaction out of him? Cut off the other hand? “Don’t you want to know what he said? Don’t you understand what this means?”

“It means you’re closer to the Force than I am these days.” He eyed her. “But you’re hiding from it, the same as me.”

“I’ve never thought you were a coward before,” Mara hissed. “But you’re changing my mind.”

“Good. You can leave any time.”

Heat blazed. Mara yanked Luke off the ground by the cowl of his robes. “Not without you, you miserable sack of bantha dung. You thought you could crawl away and plug your ears and then none of it would matter? You left a mess behind, Skywalker — face it! You left _people_ behind.”

His face twisted in a scowl. “Where have you been all these years, then? Hiding in your Imperial holdout with all the other has-beens? Cowering behind an asteroid ring and a planetary shield while the galaxy burns?”

“I’ve been out there!” Mara flung out an arm, gesturing at the increasingly stormy sky. “Living. Trying to make a difference. Those things used to matter to you!”

“They’re better off without me!” _And so are you._  The unspoken words fell between them. Mara was sorely tempted to agree, but she wasn't here to wound him. 

Or to love him, whatever Vader might say.

“I don’t want your absolution,” said Luke.

“Good,” Mara retorted harshly, “because I’m not here to give it. I never said it wasn’t your fault.”

Luke winced. “I know.” He sat down slowly, bracing himself against a large outcropping of glistening black rock. “I lost Ben to the Dark Side. Everything that’s happened since is because of me.”

Mara kicked his damn metal hand out from under him. He fell the rest of the way to the stony ground with a grunt. “I also never said it was _only_ your fault. Pull your head out of your afterburners, Skywalker. You’re not the only one involved in this. Do you even know your sister and Solo have been looking for you ever since you left?”

“I—”

“They spend more time apart than together these days,” she continued ruthlessly. “Leia’s a general now. And Solo got himself a new scow — he lost the _Falcon_ , don’t ask me how — and anyway, he’s ostensibly in shipping, which probably means smuggling, which probably means scouting or spying or something for the Resistance.”

Luke shook his head, clearly bewildered. “The Resistance?”

“The Resistance against the First Order.” She shouldn’t be enjoying this, Mara knew. It was mean-spirited, but she couldn’t help twisting the knife just a little. “You’re really behind the times, aren’t you? I have news holos on my ship. You’re welcome to watch them anytime, but let me give you the executive summary: the galaxy is going to stang. It’s past time to do something about it.” 

“The galaxy doesn’t need _me_. They want Luke Skywalker, the _legend_.” His voice dripped with scorn and self-loathing. “That person doesn’t exist anymore. He came here to die.” Luke's fatalism didn’t surprise Mara. The venom in his voice did.

“Don’t speak in the third person, Skywalker, it doesn’t suit you.” She had never been much good at comforting platitudes. “Besides, I didn’t come here for a legend.” It was suddenly hard to speak. “I came for... a friend.”

They sat in silence. Mist formed, swirled, condensed, dissipated around them. 

“You saw my dream,” Luke said slowly.

Mara nodded. 

“You saw what I did. And you still came?”

Tentatively, she placed a hand over his — the real one. “I saw your nightmare,” she corrected, “not what really happened. Tell me?”

When he did, she almost wished she hadn’t asked. 

His words came slowly at first and then rushed, like the flow of drawn blood. “The lightsaber was on before I even realized it. It was... instinct, maybe, responding to the darkness. And yet I don’t know why I thought it, even for a second,” Luke whispered, his voice wracked by an inner agony. “He’s my nephew. I loved him.”

Mara swallowed hard. Everything might very well depend on what she said in the next few minutes. “Skywalker, has it never occurred to you that the Dark Side was already there, swirling around Ben? And that you could caught up in it, even for a second?”

From his dumbfounded expression, Mara concluded that it hadn’t. _Foolish farm boy_. 

Then Luke shook his head. "It doesn't really matter, does it? If the Dark Side was there that day, then I let it in. Because I was afraid." He looked at her, his eyes hooded. "I'm still afraid. That's why I'm here. And that's why I don't dare open myself to the Force."

In a flash of insight, Mara understood. Luke hadn’t hidden himself away to wallow in misery and self-flagellation. He hadn’t cut himself off from his family, his friends, his droids, even from her because _he_  felt betrayed. He had cut himself off from the Force itself because he truly thought he was protecting everyone else from the threat that created Kylo Ren. From himself.

“You foolish farm boy,” Mara whispered. She grasped both his hands tightly. His real hand was almost as cold as the bare metal of his artificial one. “You won’t fall to the Dark Side.”

“You can’t know that,” Luke began, his voice tortured.

“I can,” insisted Mara, “because I won’t let you.” He only looked at her, so tortured and cynical and worn that she had to fight to see the face of her old friend beneath the despair. And beneath the beard. The beard would definitely have to go. “You still trust me, don’t you?”

The question hung between them. Mara Jade, Emperor’s Hand, the assassin who had sworn to kill the last Jedi. Even after all they’d been through together, Mara had always wondered whether Luke had ever really trusted her.

 _I do_. The thought blazed in her mind with all the surety of a supernova, and for a moment she shared his wonder and joy at the renewed connection — with the Force, with each other — before it winked out. “It’s myself I don’t trust,” he whispered aloud.

“Well, I trust you,” said Mara stoutly, “and you trust me, so you should trust me on this and trust yourself too."

Luke visibly paused to trace her circular reasoning. “That doesn’t make sense,” he complained. 

"Good." Pleased, Mara tugged Luke to his feet — gently, this time. "I like being an enigma. Now what's for supper, Skywalker? And if you say fish, I'll throw you off a cliff."

* * *

Supper was not fish. According to Mara, it looked, smelled and tasted like bird. 

"Bird isn't a flavor," protested Luke.

Mara sniffed and pulled out her contribution to the meal: a bottle of Verratan white wine. "If I had known you were serving _bird_ , I would have brought a red. I have a medium-bodied vintage that goes great with game."

Luke grabbed the bottle from her and took a swig before she could protest. "Tastes good to me."

Mara snatched it back and wiped the lip of the bottle on her sleeve before pouring two glasses. "Your manners have gone to hell, Skywalker."

Luke shrugged. "There's no one here to care."

"What about the fish-nuns?"

Luke goggled at her. "The what? You mean the Lanai? They're the caretakers of the island, not my guardians."

Mara glanced up the hillside towards the stone huts. Haunting piped music drifted down from their village. "They seem so judgmental."

Luke smirked. "That's because you go around breaking everything on the island." They’d reacted to him precisely the same way, not that he’d ever tell Mara as much.

"That is a gross exaggeration!" Mara objected. "Aside from the spear _—"_

"Which nearly skewered Caretaker J'Nu."

" _—_ I haven't broken anything."

"Except the day you landed." Luke neatly swirled the wine in his glass, just to prove he hadn't lost every last veneer of civilization. "You crushed their vegetable patch."

Mara winced. “I thought that flat spot  looked suspiciously regular. But—”

“I know." Luke almost smiled. “It was the only place to land.” The island’s landscape was more vertical than horizontal. It was one of the reasons he had chosen to submerge his X-wing. There weren’t many other places the Lanai could grow their scanty crops, and J’Nu was _most insistent_  that he put his great dirty heap of a flying machine far away from her carrowort bulbs.

“You should have put up a sign,” grumbled Mara, slightly red-faced.

“I wasn’t expecting visitors,” Luke retorted, but his voice was mild. “But since you’re here, I hope you brought more wine than this.” He refilled their glasses, draining the bottle in the process. "I wanted to try the red with the porg," he added by way of explanation. 

As explanations went, it was rather lacking, and he knew it. "Porg?" Mara echoed. 

Luke pointed. At the edge of the firelight, several bright-eyed shadows shifted and chirruped. One daring specimen hopped forward, flapped its stubby wings, and gazed at them imploringly with its big, dark eyes. "Porg," said Luke. "Otherwise known as supper."

Mara looked at the Porg. It squawked pitifully. She snorted in derision.

“You don’t like them?” Luke asked, genuinely curious. The island Porgs were an irritating but somehow endearing bunch. Sometimes he carved little wooden puzzles for them to play with. Which sounded kind of pathetic, now that he thought about it. But he’d always thought women liked small, cuddly, doe-eyed things.

“No,” Mara said. “What’s to like? The poop, the noise, the revolting molting? You know those things are all over my ship, right? I’ll be repairing cables and fumigating for weeks.”

Luke gasped dramatically. “You! You’re one of those monsters!” He pointed a half-eaten drumstick at her, fully aware of the irony. “You hate cute things!”

Mara shifted. “I do not. I just... resent cuteness valued for cuteness’ sake.”

Luke squinted at her as if seeing her for the first time. “You must like vornskyrs and womp rats. I bet you’d kick an Ewok if you met one.”

“If he was pointing a spear at me, you bet I would. I sure as hell wouldn’t let myself be captured and nearly roasted alive by one.” Mara had the gall to smirk at him.

“Hey, I resent that. Besides, there wasn’t just one. It was more like forty.” Twenty, at most, but who was counting? He’d never told Mara a lie that mattered, but it was fun to test her in the little things.  

Luke chucked the bone away. It fell outside the ring of firelight. He tried to ignore the chewy, grindy, bone-splintery noises that followed. Porgs weren’t as sentimental as he’d once thought.

Mara listened thoughtfully. “Maybe I underestimated the little buggers.”

Luke hunched over his plate. “Figures you’d like them now that you know they’re cannibals.” So Mara hated cute things. He should have seen that coming. Still... what did that say about him? Did she think he was cute, and hated him for it? Or did she classify him with the womp rats — ugly but likeable? Even as the thought formed, he tried to banish it. A grown man shouldn’t even be using the word _cute_ , he told himself, let alone be concerned about his own level of cuteness. Never mind the underlying insecurities about what Mara did or didn’t think about him.

Mara smirked again.

Belatedly, Luke slammed his mental shields back into place. Her continued presence was clearly a threat to his self-control. If he kept opening himself to the Force like this, he could put everyone he loved in danger all over again. He could—

A gust of wind blew out the fire. Abashed, he stared into the embers and slowly rekindled them.

He looked up to find Mara regarding him solemnly. “It’s always all or nothing with you, Skywalker, isn’t it?” Luke couldn’t tell whether she was angry or just disappointed. “You think in black and white.”

“Not everything is shades of gray, Mara.”

Luke couldn't understand why this earnest pronouncement would make her suddenly double over with laughter.

“Shades of gray!” she hooted. “Episode 50!”

Luke was stumped. “Fifty what?”

For some reason, this made Mara laugh even harder. Tears leaked out of her eyes. Luke had forgotten how green they were — every bit as vivid as the emerald mosses of Ahch-To. Somehow he doubted Mara would appreciate the comparison.

Sithspit, how strong _was_ Verratan wine, anyway?

“Oh, Skywalker, I’ve missed you.” Mara staggered to her feet. “C’mon, I have more wine on the ship. And something else you have got to see.” 

“That sounds like a cheesy holovid line,” commented Luke in amusement. He let Mara pull him along in her wake, pausing only to grab the spit with the last of the roast off the fire before the porgs could dart in and steal it. The little seabirds were heartless opportunists.

Luke tiptoed gingerly among the few hardy root vegetables that had survived Mara’s landing. If she ever left, the Lanai would put him to work restoring their garden until the winter storms set in. When he first came to Ahch-To, he thought the caretakers would revere the Jedi. They had swiftly and efficiently disabused him of  _that_ egotistical notion.

Mara would have enjoyed it.

“I’m going to enjoy this,” she announced, shoving Luke up the gangway, past the hold and into a lounge chair in front of a large screen. “Here, make yourself useful.” She handed him a wine bottle and a corkscrew and rummaged in a drawer of holovid discs. She pulled out a handful of dried grasses and broken eggshells with a noise of disgust. "Damn seabirds get into everything, even the entertainment."

“You seem pretty well stocked. I guess those long trading runs must get pretty boring without a partner,” Luke commented.

“Who said I don’t have a partner?”

Luke made a face at Mara’s back, then hastily wiped the expression from his face when she turned around brandishing a handful of gaudy vid cases.

“ _The Tales of the Jedi_?” Luke read aloud, a truly forbidding scowl forming on his face.

Mara’s smile was alarmingly predatory. “C’mon, farm boy. It’s time you learned what the _real_ legend of Luke Skywalker looks like.”

Luke examined the empty vid case while Mara cued up the holoprojector. “This doesn’t look anything like me,” he felt obligated to point out. The hero on the cover was bare-chested, brawny and brunette, with a chin shaped like a cinderblock.

“He’s a good 6 centimeters taller, too,” Mara added with unwarranted glee. “It’s a good thing you fell in with the Rebellion, farm boy. You’re too short for a stormtrooper.”

Luke flushed. “That’s the first thing Leia ever said to me,” he mumbled, burying his nose in his wine glass.

Mara _cackled._

As a direct consequence, Luke was already two sails to the solar wind by the time the opening credits rolled.

Mara shook her head in disapproval. “We have got to work on your tolerance.” She opened a new bottle of something red and murky. At this rate, Luke thought, he would need a Jedi healing trance just to find the blood in his alcohol system.

“You’re missing the synopsis,” chided Mara.

 

_It was a time of great tumult and turmoil. The villainous lord Dark Vapor, sinister agent of the Evil Empire, sped across the stars in pursuit of the lovely Rebel Princess Leah Organic, who had stolen the plans to the dread battlestation Death Moon—_

 

“What’s with all the fake names?” Luke asked, bewildered. “It’s not like we don’t know who they’re talking about.”

“Protection against libel lawsuits,” said Mara.

“Vader’s dead. I doubt he’s going to sue.”

Mara shrugged. “If I were raking in the profits from trading on the name of a Sith lord, I’d be a little paranoid too.”

 

_— and was racing against time to reach the desert planet Tatooine, where she hoped to deliver the secret schematics and enlist the aid of General Opie Kenopie, an old friend of her father’s and a Jedi Knight of the Old Republic —_

 

Mara paused the vid, waiting for Luke to stop wheezing. “I don’t know what’s worse,” he finally managed, “the run-on sentence or Old Ben’s name!”

“Oh, it gets better,” promised Mara.

 

_— who in turn, unbeknownst to our heroes, had been hiding lo these many years, acting as guardian and mentor to a new hope for the galaxy, an untrained and untested youth named Duke Starkiller—_

 

“Oh no,” groaned Luke. He hid his head in his hands. “I _told_ Wedge to stop calling me that.”

“He called you Duke?” Mara’s eyes sparkled.

Luke glared at her half-heartedly. “Starkiller. He tried to make it my callsign.”

“I always liked Antilles. Remind me to send him a bottle of Whyren’s Reserve.” 

 

_— who spent his days gazing into Tatooine’s twin suns and dreaming of adventure among the stars—_

 

“Does this sentence ever end?” Luke complained.

“Drink more,” advised Mara. “It helps.”

 

_— and longing to follow in his father’s footsteps as a daring pilot, never guessing at the dark-masked menace lurking amid the very stars he sought, a menace which, unchecked, imperiled the freedom and liberty of the entire galaxy..._

 

“Is it over yet?”

Mara yanked Luke’s hands away from his eyes. “We’re just getting started, farm boy, so strap in.”

Luke wasn’t quite sure how this had happened. In a matter of days, his hermitage and his privacy had been successfully invaded by Mara Jade, good wine and bad holovids. His lonely prison of self-imposed isolation, his stoic resistance to—

Luke grimaced. Either the bad writing of _Tales of the Jedi_  was infiltrating his inner monologue, or he was more intoxicated than he’d thought. 

In any case, he still wasn’t sure what had happened to his firm resolve to ignore Mara until she went away. He had somehow forgotten that she was a force of nature every bit as formidable as the ocean’s winter storms. 

Mara nudged his elbow. “Stop thinking,” she said softly. When had she paused the playback? And when she moved so close? She was curled up on the couch next to him, her thigh brushing his. Luke tried to run through a Jedi relaxation technique, but it didn’t seem to help. Was he really _that_  out of practice?

“I’ll be the judge of that,” Mara answered him aloud, amused. 

 _That’s not what I— oh hell._  Luke reached across her to punch play on the remote. Even the adventures of Duke Starkiller had to be preferable to Mara’s games. 

He soon regretted the impulse.

Luke watched in growing consternation as his taller counterpart single-handedly stormed the Death Moon, slaying stormtroopers indiscriminately with lightsaber and blaster in turn, and sometimes both at once. The action occasionally cut to a disturbingly blonde Han and Chewie for more of the same. Even the ersatz Artoo electrocuted an officer. 

And then there were the women.

“I don’t remember the Empire having that many slave girls.” Bemused, Luke tried to match up onscreen events with real-life memories and failed. “It wasn’t anything like that.”

Mara gripped Luke’s elbow and shook it. “Ssh, this is the best part!” Luke had to use the Force to keep from spilling his drink. It was an unorthodox application, and he was sure Obi-Wan wouldn’t approve. But Mara clearly did, and it was her ship, her upholstery and her liquor, so Luke decided not to worry for once. Then Duke blocked a blaster bolt with a lazy swing of his lightsaber and his tunic conveniently ripped, revealing a muscular chest glistening with oil. 

Luke spat out his wine.

“Hey, that’s good stuff,” objected Mara. “Don’t waste it.”

Onscreen, the slave girls reacted predictably.

“It — it wasn’t like that,” Luke protested feebly. “There wasn’t any sex on the Death Star!” Mara hooted with laughter.

 

_Princess Leah, inexplicably clad in a plastoid armor bikini, lounged on a hard bench in her cell._

_When Duke Starkiller opened the door, he struck a heroic pose. “I’m Duke Starkiller, I’m here to rescue you!”_

_Princess Leah swooned. “My hero!”_

 

“Yeah, it wasn’t like that either,” said Luke dryly.

* * *

Mara was enjoying this more and more. She had seen too little of sardonic Skywalker over the years. She was surprised at how much she enjoyed his company — and abruptly she veered away from pursuing that line of thought.

More wine. That was the solution. She busied herself opening a new bottle, noting idly that they were consuming Verratan vintages roughly in geographical order according to her favorite planetary entry vector. At this rate, they’d be blind drunk by the time they reached her home away from home. She’d have to take Luke there in person sometime...

The bottle jerked in her grasp, and the cork spat out and hit Luke in the eye.

“Ow! Can’t you aim that thing any better than that?”

“That’s what she said,” Mara sniggered.

Luke looked at her blankly.

“Oh for Sith’s sake! Don’t tell me you’ve never heard that joke?” Mara wilted as Luke shook his head. “Farm boy, that’s an _old joke_. Where have you been? How could you possibly have missed it?”

“Here,” deadpanned Luke. “And that’s what she said.”

Mara rolled her eyes. So he wasn’t a baby-faced, wet-behind-the-ears farm boy anymore. Duly noted.

 

_Duke Starkiller, newly minted hero, took the scantily clad Princess Leah in his arms. He had somehow managed to lose the upper half of his stormtrooper armor, and his oiled chest pressed against her alabaster skin. He kissed Princess Leah full on the lips._

 

Luke gaped. “It really wasn’t like that!” 

But a flush of guilty shame suffused the Force, and Mara caught a brief glimpse of a chasm and a cable and heard Leia’s voice echo “For luck,”... and Mara was not pursuing that line of inquiry _under any circumstances whatsoever_. 

She and Luke each took a very large gulp of wine without exchanging a word.

 

_They rolled around in the trash compactor, entwined around each other. They submerged, roiled to the surface, and went under again._

 

“If Duke has sex with the dianoga, I’m going to be sick,” groaned Luke.

Mara patted him on the arm. “Don’t worry. The audience for tentacles isn’t exactly mainstream.”

 

_Princess Leah screamed. Crunchy the Wookiee bellowed. Hans Yolo shouted curses in a dozen languages. Duke Starkiller slicked back his hair._

 

“I’ve changed my mind,” announced Luke. “I’m still going to be sick.”

Mara shook her head. “You won’t get out of this that easy.”

“Figures. I seem to be made to suffer. It’s my lot in life.” His impression of C-3PO was uncanny.

 

 _Finally free of the garbage compactor, our heroes reunited within sight of the brave ship_ Centennial Hawk. _"You came in that thing?" Princess Leah gasped in admiration._

_Hans Yolo winked. "I came in her, all right. She did the Kessel run in less than ten parsecs," he boasted as an afterthought._

 

“Think Solo paid for that?” Mara wondered idly.

“What, like product placement ads?” Luke shook his head. “No, he’d never spend good money on this trash...” He trailed off suspiciously. “Mara, how _did_ you find this trash?”

Mara debated telling him he needed more trash in his life, but limited herself to saying “Solo.”

“Of course it was,” Luke muttered.

Mara smirked. “I think he and Leia used to watch it together.”

Luke’s eyes grew comically wide. “But it’s practically porn!”

Mara laughed aloud. “Don’t tell me they don’t have porn on that rock you’re from,” she teased.

“On Tatooine, sure. In Aunt Beru’s house, never!” 

The look of horror on his face started Mara laughing all over again. Deep down, Luke Skywalker was still a farm boy. Not that she would ever admit it to anybody, but a small part of her was — maybe, just a little bit — glad.

 

 _During their nerve-wracking escape, Princess Leah clutched dramatically at the brawny arms of both Duke Starkiller and Hans Yolo. Somehow still able to fly and shoot while thus constrained, the daring duo decimated several TIE squadrons and escaped into hyperspace. To everyone's mutual delight, the_ Centennial Hawk _was a small ship. The princess, the scoundrel, and the fledgling Jedi kept running into each other or being thrown by turbulence into each other's arms, with much awkward bumping and grinding of various body parts. The protocol droid C-3PP kept up a running commentary on the mating habits of humans._

 

“You know,” commented Luke drowsily, his head resting on Mara’s lap, “when Han sent you to rescue me, I don’t think getting me drunk and showing me porn was what he had in mind.”

Mara flicked his ear, mainly to avoid playing with his hair. He was so _shaggy_. “Maybe he thought you needed a good drinking binge and porno holo. This is Solo we’re talking about after all. But I think he would have settled for pretty much anything fun with another sentient being.”

“The caretakers are sentient,” argued Luke.

“The fish-nuns?” Mara scoffed. “They wouldn’t know fun if it crawled in their earholes and laid eggs there.”

Luke gagged. “Lovely visual.”

 

 _No sooner had our heroes safely landed in the steamy jungles of Yavin IV than the dread Death Moon showed its round, pale face in the black space above the innocent moon. Behind his darkly gleaming mask, Dark Vapor plotted the demise of the brave Rebellion. Below, the Princess and her Rebels concocted a daring plan_ — _a plan that depended on a single torpedo penetrating a vulnerable shaft, and on the sensitivity of a young pilot who had only just begun to discover the ways of the Force…_

* * *

When she woke the next morning, Mara couldn’t remember finishing the movie. She had dozed off somewhere around the climax, which Skywalker would no doubt find highly amusing. 

“Ugh,” he groaned from the vicinity of her armpit. “Don’t think so loud.”

“Sorry,” said Mara, summoning every ounce of good cheer she absolutely _did not feel_ , just to annoy him. “I thought you’d be a morning person. Farmer, two suns and all.”

Luke grumbled something in Huttese that even _The_ _Tales of the Jedi_  wouldn’t dare put in their script.

“Don’t the Jedi have some sort of secret hangover remedy?” Mara tried to keep a pathetic note of hope out of her voice.

Luke grunted and sat upright, looking like he immediately regretted the move. “Trust me, there’s nothing that practical in the sacred texts.”

“I don’t suppose your caretakers...?”

That finally earned a smile, although not for the reason she expected. “Don’t underestimate the Lanai. They throw the wildest parties this side of the Rim. First time I heard one, I thought it was an invasion. Turned out to be their version of the hornpipes.” 

Mara chuckled. “I bet you rushed in there, lightsaber blazing, ready to fend off the entire First Order.”

Luke ran a hand through his hair, leaving half of it standing on end. “Something like that,” he admitted, “only no lightsaber. Don’t ask,” he warned when Mara opened her mouth. “At least not yet,” he relented. 

Mara let it pass for now. “So no hangover cure?”

“Not unless you want to slurp algae.” Luke wiggled his fingers. “And little tiny tadpoles.”

“Eurgh.” Mara closed her eyes and tried to blot out the image by mentally tracing circuit paths in a hyperdrive motivator.

“Any more great ideas, Master Trader Jade?”

“Evisceration comes to mind, Master Jedi Skywalker.”

Luke affected a look of wounded surprise. “ _You_ want to kill _me_? It’s inconceivable! Intolerable! In—”

“Inevitable,” growled Mara.

Luke laughed, stood and pulled Mara to her feet. “Let’s get you some coffee,” he said indulgently. “I may be out of practice, but I do remember that much.”

 

The days blurred into an unexpectedly domestic routine. Tentative conversations gave way to long talks under the stars. Luke started to suspect Mara of training him like a pet vornskyr, smacking him when he lapsed into self-pity and rewarding him with treats when he behaved, in her words, like a normal human being. 

He learned more than he wanted to about the current state of the galaxy, although Mara was kind enough — or perhaps cruel enough — to intersperse episodes from _The Tales of the Jedi_ , giving him a chance to absorb it all. The news that Leia and Han’s relationship was crumbling should have come as no surprise, but the pain and unexpected sense of loss had been blossoming ever since Mara’s first oblique reference days earlier. Tentatively, Luke reached out to the one person he should never have left behind. 

_Leia?_

He couldn’t tell whether the silence was hers or in his own mind.

Hours later, Mara found him looking out over the endless expanse of ocean. She sat next to him and dangled her legs over the cliff. He had to resist the impulse to pull her back from the edge.

Mara shot him a withering look. “Don't start that overprotective crap again," she admonished. "Han and Leia didn’t need your help to tear themselves apart in their grief. Their marriage isn’t your responsibility.”

“Since when did you add marriage counselor to your trading license?” The retort came out sharper than he meant it.

“It’s funny,” said Mara. “Ten years ago I would have been telling you everything that _was_  your fault. The overuse of power, the arrogance of declaring yourself master and training new Jedi...”

“So you think I’m right,” said Luke in disbelief. "You think it is all my fault.”

Mara scowled at him. “No, laserbrain, you’ve gone too far in the other kriffing direction! Do you bear some of the responsibility, some of the blame? Yes. Ten years ago you wouldn’t have acknowledged that much. Good for you, you get a gold star." Her mouth tightened. "But no, it's not enough for you to own up to your mistakes. You have to take on everyone else's too — because deep down, you still believe in Luke Skywalker, the legend."

Luke clenched his fists, but Mara didn't let him interrupt her tirade.

"You don't _get_ to take all the blame. Sorry, Skywalker, it's not that easy — because it’s not your responsibility to make anyone else’s choices for them. Do you want to know what  _is_ your fault? This!” Mara pinwheeled her arms, forcing Luke to duck. “This self-indulgent hideaway of yours. Thinking that because you screwed up, the whole Jedi Order is supposed to end. Thinking that Ben Solo holds no accountability for his own actions. That you have the right to make others’ decisions for them, to choose their fates, to be the guardian and judge for the whole galaxy. It’s beyond egotistical. It’s tyrannical, Luke. It’s _wrong_.” 

He was used to Angry Mara. But when the anger drained from her face, she looked… sad. And Luke didn't know what to do with that. So he reacted to her words instead, pushing everything else aside as not relevant. At least for now.

“You should have been the master,” Luke said quietly. “Not me.”

Mara's laugh was strained, but it was a laugh. The tension between them eased. “Can you picture me teaching a roomful of children not to chop their own arms off with a lightsaber?”

Luke smiled faintly. “I think I’d pay good credits to see it. You’re a good mentor, Mara. You’d make a good teacher.”

For some reason, this elicited the return of Angry Mara. "Stop trying to recruit me, Jedi. I will never call you _Master_."

Luke gaped after her as she stormed away. "What did I say?" he asked a nearby porg. It warbled and ducked out of sight. Luke decided he knew good advice when he saw it, and retreated to his hut.

It was surprisingly cold and empty without Mara. Luke tried telling himself that he missed the wine. Then he tried telling himself that it was no more than he deserved. Finally, he was forced to acknowledge the truth: that he had finally found the first threads of peace he had been hoping to find when he came to Ahch-To.

The only problem was, he had found them in Mara Jade instead. And with Mara, _peace_ wasn't always a synonym for _cessation of hostilities._

 

Before Luke could scrounge some red-bloomed fungi flowers from J'nu's garden, Mara appeared at the mouth of his hut with a bottle of wine and a portable holo-projector. "I overreacted," she admitted. "It wasn't you. It was something Vader said."

Luke knew better than to press his luck, he really did. But all the same, he couldn't help it. "He said you were destined to be a Jedi?"

Mara's jaw tightened. "You don't know when to quit, do you? Like father, like son." She tugged vigorously at the cork, and Luke ducked in a belated abundance of caution. "He said I would make a good Jedi," she admitted grudgingly.

"You would."

"I don't _want_ to be a Jedi."

Luke wasn't sure which of them she was trying to convince, but he tried to take Mara's advice to heart. This was her decision, and it wasn't his place to interfere. Even if her path seemed so clear to him, and she was tormented by indecision.

 _Stang_ , but it was hard not to say anything.

"Shut it, Skywalker."

"What?" He held up his hands. "I didn't say anything!"

Mara rolled her eyes. "You were thinking it. Loudly, I might add."

Luke winced. He really had thought his control was better than that. "Sorry, Mara."

She sniffed and handed over a glass of wine. "Don't let it happen again." Mara bent over the holo-projector and aimed it at the stone wall. "It's not going to be great quality," she said, rising and unfurling a white sheet that she tucked among the rocks, "but it's still the best entertainment this place has seen in a few eons."

Luke summoned his bedroll and thin, hard pillows with a wave. "The seats aren't much," he said.

Shrugging, Mara settled next to him on the packed earth. "Better than Myrkr. At any rate, nothing's trying to eat us here."

Luke snorted. "Thanks for the memories." He sensed Mara's mood turn. Her sudden mischief was a welcome change, but it made him wary. "What?"

"Funny you should say that. Guess what tonight's episode is?" Her eyes sparkled. Luke felt a sudden sense of foreboding. "That's right, farm boy. It's about the night we met. Remember?"

"It's hard to forget someone trying to kill me," he answered wryly.

"Really?" she asked innocently. "It happens so often, I would think the assassination attempts all blur together."

"Hah-kriffing-hah. Just start the torture already." Luke settled back and was surprised to find his arm curling around Mara's shoulders. She stiffened for a moment, shrugged almost imperceptibly and then relaxed, curling into his side.

 _That_ was new.

"You asked for it," Mara reminded him, and pushed play. Against the stacked and staggered stones of the wall, a forest scene came to life: a luridly red-haired woman with curves impossible on high-gravity worlds contemplated the wreckage of a Skipray Blastboat.

Luke's eyebrows rose. "Nice—"

Mara turned to glare at him. She was close enough that her hair brushed his cheek. It made her glare especially disconcerting.

"—hair," Luke finished, changing course mid-sentence. "Remember those scarlet humming-moths? They'd be all over her head in a heartbeat if they were really on Myrkr." The distraction seemed to work: Mara chuckled and refilled both their wine glasses. Crisis averted, Luke tried to sit back and enjoy the show. But his eyes were constantly drawn away from the buxom facsimile onscreen and towards the real woman at his side.

Fortunately, Mara was too engrossed in her mission to notice. In the middle of the action, she had decided to shave his beard. Luke half-expected her to do it with the Force and a large knife. She seemed to enjoy making him nervous, and watching a bare blade hover near his neck would have done the trick. Instead, it was Mara’s slender, calloused hands holding his chin, turning his face, brushing over his cheek to check for stubble.

“There,” she murmured. “Baby-faced Skywalker, good as new.”

Luke discovered two things: first, that Tender Mara made him even more nervous than Heavily Armed Mara. And second, she seemed to enjoy this particular kind of nervousness even more.

Skies, but what was _in_ Verratan wine, anyway?

 

 _One minute they were exchanging insults, blaster bolts and blows with crackling lightsabers. The next, Duke Starkiller was sweeping the lovely and deadly Tara Greenstone off her feet_ — _literally._

 

“You’re not tall enough to do that in real life,” Mara pointed out gleefully.

Luke dug his elbow into her side, but she only laughed. Was Master Trader Mara Jade ticklish? The possibilities demanded immediate investigation.

 

_Tara giggled and flipped her shockingly scarlet hair. “Is that a lightsaber in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?"_

 

Luke gagged at the line. Distracted from his mission, he paused for a fatal moment. Mara immediately uncurled from her fetal position and flipped Luke onto his back.

"Turnabout is fair play, Jedi," she purred. "Let's see. What will make the great Jedi Master squirm? Tickling? Or… something else?"

 

_“Both, actually,” Duke purred, pulling a lightsaber out of his pocket while somehow managing to hold onto Tara, who somehow managed to swoon even further._

 

"Aren't you ticklish?" Mara demanded.

"Sorry," Luke apologized unnecessarily. "When you grow up on a planet scoured by sand, you learn to ignore the feeling of it drifting down the back of your shirt."

"Bet you I can find _someplace_ ticklish," she threatened. Her eyes roved downward.

Luke swallowed.

 

_“For me?” she gasped._

_“I admire your courage and your honor. They are some of your greatest assets.”_

_The camera focused on some of Tara’s other greatest assets._

_Duke set Tara on her feet and struck a heroic pose. “I present you with Dark Vapor’s lightsaber,” he announced, “in recognition of your place among the ranks of the Jedi.”_

 

Mara abruptly paused the recording and pushed Luke away. “Is that why you gave me Vader’s lightsaber?” she demanded. “Because I damn well should have some say in whether I become a Jedi or not!”

Desperately trying to keep up with her, Luke sputtered. “That’s not even real,” he protested, gesticulating at the holo screen. A belated but judicious unorthodox application of the Force sent his spilled drink swirling back into his glass, defying all known laws of physics.

“Doesn’t mean it’s not true.” Stubbornly, Mara held her ground. “So what’s the real reason, Jedi?”

“Stop calling me that!” Luke thundered. The projector flickered, and he drew a calming breath. “I’m sorry,” he murmured.

Hesitantly Mara reached out and touched his arm. “Luke,” she said by way of apology, “I really need to know.”

Luke sighed. “I don’t really know myself, Mara. It felt like the right thing to do, is all. If anyone had earned the right to wear it, you did.”

“Because I passed some test?” Mara asked sourly.

Luke looked at her in surprise. For perhaps the first time since she had arrived on Ahch-To, his mind and face were open to her. “No,” he said. “Because you had become everything Vader could have been. Because of your courage, your honor...” he trailed off and flushed, clearly realizing whose words he was repeating.

Mara snorted. “If you keep counting my _assets_ , farm boy, you’re going to lose another hand.”

Luke’s smile twisted wryly. “I suppose symmetry had something to do with it too. Not with your, uh, assets,” he added hurriedly in response to Mara’s dark look. “I just mean… well, Vader tried to kill me, and wound up saving me instead.”

“You saved him, too,” Mara pointed out.

“We saved each other,” said Luke softly. “Maybe you and I did the same.”

Mara blew out a long sigh. “I wasn’t a Dark Lord of the Sith,” she retorted half-heartedly.

“No, but you did want to kill me.”

“There you go with that past tense again.” 

Luke bumped his shoulder against hers. The gesture felt familiar, affectionate, and it made Mara suddenly nervous.

“You don’t want to kill me anymore,” he announced with a trace of arrogance.

“Don’t be so sure,” Mara muttered. Luke frowned at her. Before he could say something penetrating and unnervingly accurate, she went on the offensive. “So what happened to your lightsaber?”

Luke shrugged listlessly. “No idea. I told Artoo to get rid of it someplace safe.” He frowned. “I hope he’s not still carrying it around.”

“Do... do you want this one back?” Mara proffered her lightsaber. Her voice was steady despite the sudden lump in her throat.

Luke’s hands closed hers around the hilt. “Absolutely not. It belongs with you.” 

Mara vacillated for a moment, poised on the edge between genuine gratitude and safer sarcasm. “Very phallic,” she said finally, not because she didn’t want to acknowledge the gesture, but because she couldn’t resist the line.

Luke winked. “I aim to please.”

Mara took that as a sign to resume the holovid. But she had forgotten just how steamy things were getting on Myrkr.

 

_"We belong together, Tara." Duke gazed earnestly into her jewel-bright eyes. Her green gaze was a force unto itself, and he was powerless to resist. "The Force has told me so."_

_"The Force is strong with you," Tara murmured, drawing Duke closer. "I can feel it."_

"Heh."

Luke froze. "What did you say?"

Mara frowned at him. "I didn't say anything." She didn't think Luke was _that_ distracted. Clearly he was out of practice with his split concentration exercises. 

"Heh."

They looked at each other. Neither had spoken. As one, they turned.

A luminous figure squatted in the doorway.

"Master Yoda!" gasped Luke. He sat up and tugged his robes into further disorder, trying frantically to rearrange them.

 _I am not watching porn with the ghost of a Jedi Master_ , Mara chanted to herself.  _I am not watching porn with the ghost of a Jedi Master._

“Heh heh heh.” The odd little being's long, pointy ears lifted. "Ah, Skywalker. Missed you, have I. And Jade! Missed Skywalker too, have you, but missing him now you are not!"

When Mara finished untangling the syntax, she hid her face in her hands. _I am not discussing sex with the ghost of a Jedi Master. I am not…_

Yoda made a disapproving noise. "Never your mind on where you are! What you are doing! Hm? Hmph!"

 _Oh my stars and little mynocks._ Why did every passing Force ghost feel the need to give input on her sex life?

"Come," said Yoda impatiently. Mara bit her tongue. "Come, come, you must! Something to show you, have I."

Obediently, Luke rose to his feet. His newly bare cheeks were flaming red, though. As strange as the encounter was for Mara, she could only imagine what Luke must be feeling. It could hardly get any more bizarre if Palpatine showed up with romantic advice of his own.

If he did, she was blasting off this waterlogged rock, with or without Luke.

They emerged from the hut into a sudden squall. "It wasn't raining a second ago," Mara called over the howling wind.

Yoda pointed a ghostly blue stick into a curtain of rain. "Look," he commanded.

Mara squinted into the rain. There seemed to be vague shapes moving in the mist, but she couldn't make them out. Luke took her hand, and suddenly they came into focus: a girl climbing a hill, a spherical droid rolling after her. A shattered mask falling to the ground. A beam of light, refracted and piercing into the night. A massive Star Destroyer splitting in two. A man reaching out his hand to stroke the face of an unseen figure, and then falling, falling with the rain into the abyss…

"Han," whispered Luke, stricken. He looked imploringly at Yoda. "Tell me this isn't like Bespin. Tell me I can _do_ something to stop it!"

As his attention wavered, so did the shadows in the mist. But Mara saw one more figure, cloaked and familiar. It sat, serene and straight, and seemed to brighten the darkness around it for the briefest of moments — and then the cloak fluttered to the ground, empty. Mara's heart clenched, and then it rebelled. _No_ , she vowed to the Force and any of its ghosts that might be listening. _I won't let that happen. Not Luke. Not now._

"Do," said Yoda, "or do not. Always in motion, the future is." He jabbed his stick at the ground. "One Jedi — even a powerful Jedi! — can be lost on that path."

"What about two?" asked Mara. She felt like someone else was speaking words with her mouth.

"Two Jedi, you ask? Hmm." Yoda nodded slowly. "Yes. The Force is strong with you. But stronger you are _together_ , hmm?" His chuckle echoed long after his form faded back into the mist. "Two Jedi, yes! Heh heh heh." 

Luke and Mara were left standing alone in the rain, both trying to absorb the implications of their shared vision.

“You look like a drowned womp rat,” said Mara, recovering her voice.

Luke stirred. “That’s why you like me.” He smiled weakly. It must have been a private joke, because Mara didn’t get it. “You know,” he added in an odd voice, “I used to have a fantasy like this.”

Mara stared at him, wide-eyed. _Really? You want to talk about this now?_  She opened her mouth to say something sarcastic, something cutting, something... “Like what?” Mara asked instead. Then, to cover up her slip and everything it betrayed, she threw in a shaky quip and an equally shaky laugh. “A wet dream?” 

Luke swallowed hard. He didn’t even need to nod. Mara could have smacked herself. Desert farm boy. _Of course_ he’d have fantasies about rain-drenched wenches. 

Luke blushed — it was painfully obvious without the beard. “I had a fantasy like this,” Luke said carefully, “about you. Us.”

Mara blinked. Rivulets of rain got in her eyes. She blinked harder. 

After a very long, increasingly uncomfortable moment, Luke offered a way out. “It could have been a vision. I mean, a vision of us, here and now. Just standing in the rain.” She could feel his thoughts veer away from Yoda and their vision. Time enough for that later, when they were both calmer.

Right now, Mara was feeling anything but calm. “Were we... _standing_ in this vision of yours?” Mara’s voice came out strangled. 

Incredibly, Luke’s blush deepened.

“Oh my stars.” Mara covered her eyes. “I should never have let you watch _Tales of the Jedi_.”

Luke abruptly burst out laughing and slung an arm around her shoulders. He pulled her close. Their soaked clothing squelched. “We could go aboard and watch some more,” he suggested. “Get warm and dry.”

“What about your fantasy?” The words came out before she could think, and she stared at Luke dumbly, watching their effect play across his face.

And... elsewhere.

“I could show you,” he mumbled, “if you want.” He meant a Force link, of course. He was still too much of a farm boy to register how else his words could be interpreted — and he was entirely too dependent on the Force for knowing what other people thought and felt. What _she_ thought and felt. It was infuriating.

“So show me,” Mara said and kissed him.

She didn’t miss the beard. 

* * *

They didn’t make it back to the ship and its comfortable beds. They didn’t dare descend to the village with Luke’s stone hut and its uncomfortable bed; apparently the Lanai were vaguely Force-sensitive, and Luke had enough presence of mind not to start a riot with his and Mara’s... activities. By the time the rain stopped, they were both thoroughly drenched, chilled, sore from the hard-packed earth and tumbled rocks beneath the deceivingly soft and springy moss — and incomprehensibly, blindingly happy.

“Is this love, Skywalker?” Mara asked without lifting her head from where it rested on his bare chest.

Luke snorted softly. “I think love is normally on a first-name basis.”

Mara traced a pattern on his chest. Luke thought it rather resembled hyperdrive circuitry. "Is this love, Luke?"

His thoughts stuttered to a halt. He'd rather expected her to duck the question. Would the woman never stop surprising him? "I don't know," he answered truthfully. "But... I think I'd like to find out."

Mara rewarded him with a brilliant smile. He couldn't help but return it in kind. “Shower,” she commanded, pulling him to his feet. She winced and rubbed her shoulder. “Now.”

“I think we’ve just had one.” Despite the crick in his back and the still-dripping sky, Luke couldn’t remember being this cheerful in _years_. Decades, maybe.

“Warm shower,” corrected Mara, “warm food, warm bed.”

Obediently, Luke followed her back to the _Jade’s Fire_ , taking full advantage of the view to watch her _assets_ clad in wet clothing. Something invisible swatted him on the back of his head. 

 _Stop that_ , Mara admonished silently. But her shoulders shook and even her mental voice was laughing. 

Luke had never seen her so ebullient. He ruthlessly tamped down a surge of pride. That was the way to the Dark Side — and to being locked out of Mara’s ship and all its comforts. But perhaps smug satisfaction was allowable.

That selfsame smug satisfaction came back to bite him a second later, when Mara ducked into the ship and started to raise the ramp before he was aboard. "Hey!" Luke yelped and rolled through the opening. He glared up at Mara from the floor. She leaned against the bulkhead and grinned at him. 

"You were getting awfully sure of yourself, Skywalker," she said. "Somebody's got to keep you on your toes."  

Luke smiled wryly. “Reminds me of something Ben Kenobi said once. ‘Who is more foolish — the fool, or the fool who follows him?’”

“Are you calling me a fool?” Mara’s voice was uncommonly gentle.

Luke shook his head. “Nope, just me.”

“Myself.”

“Huh?”

“Didn’t they teach you grammar in the Jundland Wastes, farm boy?”

“I didn’t live _in_ the Wastes, you know,” Luke felt obliged to point out. “Just near them.” He winced internally. Said aloud, the distinction didn’t sound very... distinctive. 

Mara snorted. “Yes, that’s much better.”

And just like that, they were back on firmer ground. _Note to self,_ Luke thought, _when all else fails, use sarcasm_. If she stuck around long enough, he could write the book on Mara Management. He was sure she’d take great pleasure in burning it in front of him.

Mara once again short-circuited his introspection by dragging him into the shower, wet clothes and all. The jets of warm water were bliss. "Skywalker," she purred, "do you know what I want you to do for me first thing in the morning?" 

Luke's imagination offered up several possibilities, but Mara waved them away. She pulled him close by the neck of his much-abused robe, and she pressed her lips against his ear. The last thing she murmured before all rational thought failed was, once again, the last thing he would have expected.

"Get those kriffing porgs off my ship."


	3. Womp rats are not a universal unit of measurement

_Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,_  
_the world offers itself to your imagination,_  
 _calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting,_  
 _over and over announcing your place_  
 _in the family of things._

— Mary Oliver, “Wild Geese”

 

_I like that you’re broken, broken like me_  
_Maybe that makes me a fool_  
 _I like that you’re lonely, lonely like me_  
 _I could be lonely with you_

— Lovely the Band, “Broken”

 

Early the next morning, before Mara Jade, Caffeine-Starved Beast of the Morning could terrorize anyone else, Luke deposited three chubby porg nestlings in a wind-stunted tree. "That raving bitch lunatic in there is the woman I love," he told them confidentially. "You'd better stay off her ship, or she'll eat you for breakfast. Literally. And no more chewing on the power cables, huh? Leave those for the mynocks."

With that sage advice, he wandered back to his hut and surveyed the miserable emptiness that had been his existence until Mara arrived.

_Are you ready to admit I'm right?_ Her mental voice sounded less groggy. She must have found the tea he'd left for her. A highly caffeinated loose leaf of his own making, it was a heady mix of anistar, carrowort and kelp. Not that he would tell J'Nu how he was using the fruits of the Caretakers' garden. 

_Are you ready to stop gloating?_  he countered. There was no answer, so he started packing his meager belongings. Now where was that toolkit he used to have? If he was going to raise his X-wing out of the ocean, it would almost certainly need some repairs. If the water's salinity had compromised seal integrity, they'd have to stow it in the hold until they could reach the nearest shipyard... Luke stubbed his toe on a manual screwdriver and swore. Where was the blasted hydrospanner?

"You know, a good screw won't solve all your problems." Mara appeared in the doorway in time to see him hopping around on one foot. Why couldn't she ever show up when he was looking dignified?

"Do you have to be so vulgar?" he complained. 

"No," admitted Mara. "I just like seeing you blush. It's really obvious without the beard, you know."

Luke grimaced and tried to change the subject. "So what did you think of Yoda?"

"His timing could have been better." Mara chuckled ruefully. "He was... interesting. Explains a lot about your hermit life here."

"Hmph." 

"Oh stop sulking, Skywalker." 

It was hard not not sulk. Even now, she wouldn't use his first name. Some of his irritation must have shown on his clean-shaven face, or through the Force, because Mara looked oddly guilty. "Okay, so you're not the only one with problems... Luke." She sat on his bed, which wasn't much more than a hard bedroll on a hard slab of rock, and made a face. "Seriously, aside from the scenery, why did you come _here_?"

Luke extended a hand. "Let me show you."

* * *

An old tree and a pile of old books. Well, thought Mara, there was no accounting for some people's taste. Although she wasn't sure what it said about her own taste that she had tied herself to Luke Skywalker, island hermit and hoarder of moldy books. 

"Moldy sacred texts," Luke corrected aloud, clearly amused by her line of thought. "The writing is kind of moldy too, to be honest."

"Not exactly page-turners, huh?" The salt-laden air couldn't have done the pages or binding any good, either. The only thing holding them together might just have been the Force itself. Still, Mara found herself fingering the volumes wistfully. "Did you find what you were looking for?" 

"I have now." Something in his voice made her look up sharply. He raised an eyebrow pointedly. _Are you going to make me say it?_

Mara's mind spun. Was this really the same Luke Skywalker who had all but tried to chase her off the island with a spear a mere week ago? The same Luke Skywalker who thought everyone else in the galaxy was better off without him in it? The same Luke Skywalker who she still wanted to murder sometimes, whose arrogance worried her and whose self-sacrificing tendencies infuriated her? 

But it was also the same Luke who made her tea in the morning, who rescued porg nestlings before they could fry themselves chewing on the _Fire's_  power couplings, and who blushed delightfully when Mara teased him. 

"Ground control to Master Trader Jade." Luke gently took a book from her hands. "Mara, did I say something wrong?"

"Only when you called me a raving bitch lunatic," she retorted, but she couldn't even muster a fake scowl. 

Luke flushed. "You heard that?"

Mara couldn't resist. "A little bird told me. Your porg friends are terrible gossips."

Luke returned the crumbling tome to its humble shelf. Mara reached past him and turned it right side up. “So what have you been doing all morning?” he asked, clearly trying to change the subject. Subtlety had never been Luke’s strong point. 

They emerged from the hollow tree into the sunshine. “I had two messages come in while we were... um, they came in last night.” She fought to control her rising blush. If there was a Jedi trick for that, Luke had clearly never learned it, so she was on her own. “I watched them while you were on your porg rescue mission this morning. Did I tell you about the witless wonder?”

“I hope you don’t mean me.”

Mara smiled. “Not this time. There’s a missing Resistance agent who I’m supposed to find when I’m done with you.”

Luke snickered.

Mara cleared her throat. “I was going to ask you to come with me, if you play nice.”

Sobering, Luke grabbed her hand and tugged her to a stop. “I was hoping you would. Now that I’ve found you again, I don’t want to let go.”

“Correction: I found you, and I don’t intend to let you out of my sight,” Mara retorted.

Luke smiled. “Then we’re on the same page. Good.”

Mara wasn’t sure how he came to that conclusion, but she supposed he wasn’t entirely wrong.

“Now,” said Luke indulgently, “tell me about this witless wonder of yours.”

Mara snorted. “He’s not mine, that’s for damn sure.” They resumed their descent, picking their way down the rugged, moss-carpeted hillside. “His name is Witt Borkin, and from what Solo said, he’s as green as they come and as thick as a durasteel plate. He was supposed to make contact with a historian whose last known location was the outskirts of the Inner Rim. What was his name... Lor San Tekka?”

Luke’s jolt of recognition made them both stop in their tracks. “I know him. Lor San Tekka helped me find the map that led me here, to Ahch-To. He dedicated his life to studying and recovering Jedi lore that was lost after the Emperor’s purge. What happened?”

Mara felt a sudden sense of foreboding. “No one knows. According to the files Solo sent, Borkin was all set to make contact, but his last transmission was pretty garbled. Something about debris, maybe his ship was damaged on entry to some planet. Apparently Leia was going to send some hotshot pilot out looking for him. I think Han got offended, talked her out of it and called me instead.”

Luke raised an eyebrow. “I thought he sent you after me.”

Mara frowned at him. “First, he wanted a package deal — which I don’t do, by the way. Second and most important, nobody _sends_ me anywhere, Skywalker. I chose to come.”

“Are you glad you did?” He looked like the fate of the galaxy hung on her answer.

So Mara kissed him. 

It seemed to be a satistactory answer for both parties.

Later, Luke was apparently still mulling over her words. “You said Han wanted a package deal?”

“Yep. Missing Jedi brother-in-law, missing ship, missing agent.” Mara ticked them off on her fingers.

“Are you collecting a fee for, well, collecting me?” Luke asked in disbelief.

“First rule of trading: never do anything for free.”

Luke folded his arms. “So what is your fee, exactly?”

Mara grinned at him. “You mean, what’s the going rate for a Jedi Master these days?” She toyed with the idea of naming some outrageously high sum — or better yet, outrageously low — just to watch his reaction. But the vague distress simmering below his question was genuine, so Mara reluctantly passed up the opportunity to tease him. “I didn’t ask for cold credits, you know. I’m no bounty hunter. But favors owed are as good as currency in a pinch. You know that.”

Luke made several mental suggestions involving favors and pinches, which Mara catalogued for later reference. She was learning all kinds of unexpected things about Luke Skywalker. Had she ever really known him at all?

“You do now,” he murmured. “And I know you, inside and out.”

That was likely true, Mara realized, but she hated being predictable.

“Then you know what I’m going to suggest next,” she said as coquettishly as she could manage while keeping a straight face. 

Luke looked torn between anticipation and suspicion. 

Mara leaned forward to whisper seductively in his ear. “Let’s go organize my cargo hold.”

* * *

Luke looked at the hold in disbelief. “You have so much stuff that you couldn’t fit a womp rat in here, let alone my X-wing.”

“Womp rats aren’t a universal unit of measurement!” Mara said in fond exasperation. “It’ll fit.”

“How?” Dubiously, Luke nudged a cargo container closer to the bulkhead. It slid all of a centimeter before catching on another crate. “Have you measured it?”

Mara rolled her eyes. “I don’t need to measure. I know how to pack things. Trust me, it’ll fit.”

Luke raised a hand. “Is now when I’m supposed to say _that’s what she said_?”

Mara shot him a withering look. “Now is when you’re supposed to exercise those Jedi muscles and help me lift things.”

“Here I always told my students being a Jedi was about more than lifting rocks,” grumbled Luke.

“You’re not lifting rocks, you’re lifting valuable merchandise — including my entire shipment of Verratan wine — so don’t you dare break anything.”

Suitably abashed, Luke tucked his arms behind his back. “I’ll be careful,” he promised. “I know you’ll maim or murder me if I ruin your shipment.” 

“Damn straight. Now, we need your X-wing right by the bay door, ready to launch in a—”

“In a pinch?” suggested Luke.

Mara’s lips twitched. “In a heartbeat.” She cleared her throat and pulled up her manifest. “Next comes the near-system cargo, pre-paid first, standard contract second. Universal supplies, easily accessible along the main aisle.  Specialty goods, along the starboard bulkhead. Foodstuffs, port bulkhead. Far-system cargo should go at the back — there won’t be much of it,  it’s mainly there to disguise some shipments for the Resistance.” Mara shook her head in disgust. “The First Order patrols are getting more daring in the territory they claim, but they don’t tend to dig past the first layer of Gamorrean delicacies, Askajian clothing and the like.”

Luke grinned in appreciation. “Ithorian aphrodisiacs? Trandoshan egg fertilizer-enhancers?”

“Ooh, that’s a good one. Write that down in the list of goods to acquire.”

“Toydarian wing lotion? Togorian hairball remedies? Verpine chitin lubricant?”

Mara laughed. “Is that even real? Never mind, write it down anyway. The stormtroopers will never know the difference.”

While he was at it, Luke added a few more items for Mara to find later — hopefully when he was out of arm’s reach. Not that she wasn’t equally deadly from a distance, but it would give him an extra half-second to react in self-defense.

Soon, all his clever ideas for Mara-baiting had to be shelved, along with seemingly every other item in her cargo hold. He lost track of the meiloorun fruit crates, Blas-Tech rangefinders, Verratan wine cases, alluvial damper repair kits, flimsy reams, wroshyr-wood panelling, durasteel blanks, and other mundane necessities and exotic goods. Even with Luke doing the heavy lifting and Mara providing _highly detailed_  direction, it took them the better part of the day to shift everything so that his X-wing could fit. 

Then they had to strap everything down again. Then they had to construct a rough frame for his X-wing so it wouldn’t scratch her flooring. Then they had to cover it with fireproof, heat-absorbing blankets, so if he had to blast out during an emergency, he wouldn’t entirely ruin the contents of her hold.

“The temperature difference would be too much for the wine and the fruit,” Mara said, “but I’d rather not burn the wroshyr wood. Do you know how much that stuff costs?”

Luke admitted he was rather out of the loop regarding the supply, demand and price points of wroshyr wood.

Mara looked at him suspiciously. Luke tried to keep his facial expression bland. It was so much harder to fool her without the beard.

“Are you making fun of me?” she demanded.

“Just admiring your assets,” he deadpanned.

* * *

From her stony village, Caretaker J’Nu looked down at the shameless display of human emotion taking place in the ruins of her garden. She would have to keep the younger Lanai thoroughly occupied tonight. She shook out her skirts and marched inside to begin preparations for Washing Day.

That should sufficiently distract even the flightiest novitiate from the goings-on below. J’Nu clucked to herself in irritation. At this rate, she would never get her garden replanted before the winter sea-storms.

* * *

This time they made it to the bed, where it was warm and comfortable, and where they promptly fell asleep.

Mara woke first, which was unusual. It normally took three alarms and an irate droid or copilot to rouse her. But the only sound was Luke’s soft snoring at her side. 

Thinking back over the past several days, Mara still wasn’t entirely sure how they’d ended up _here_.

When she came to Ahch-To in search of Skywalker, this was decidedly not what she’d had in mind. It wasn’t even what she had in mind when she had started to tease him. She had only wanted to test that damned Jedi control of his, to make Luke squirm a little, to force him to break his old habit of keeping everybody not just at arm’s length but at a distance measured in parsecs.  _Trust a Jedi to screw up every last one of my plans._ But maybe she couldn’t speak pejoratively about Jedi anymore. From what Yoda had said, she might very well be one now. How could she tell? Mara didn’t feel any different. She’d have to ask Luke...

Luke. 

Damn Vader, but he had been right — on both counts. 

_Love my son well, Master Trader Jade. You’ll make a good Jedi yet._

Damn, damn, damn his ghost to kriffing hell.

Mara sighed and let her ire fade as the dawn washed shadows away with its pale light. She gently traced Luke’s face with a feather-light touch. It would be interesting to see whether he would shave or regrow the beard. The negotiations alone would be something to look forward to.

Stars above, she was already thinking of the future. Of  _their_  future.

“I can feel you thinking,” murmured Luke drowsily.

Mara started. How long had he been awake, _feeling_  her thinking?

_About as long as you’ve been awake, watching me sleeping_ , came the amused reply. _Why pretend? I know you hear my thoughts, too._

He had a point. They had nothing to hide from each other. Not anymore. 

“So where do we go from here?” asked Luke. Mara was glad he sounded as tentative as she felt.

Then, whether it was the prodding of the Force or some quirk of her own memory, the answer sprang to her lips. “We go to Jakku,” she blurted.

Luke blinked. “Is that code for _we go nowhere_?” he asked carefully.

Mara chuckled. She felt Luke relax at her side. “No. I actually mean we go to Jakku.” 

“Don’t take this the wrong way, Mara, but a desert junkyard isn’t my idea of a dating scene.” Luke’s tone was fittingly dry.

“Priorities, Skywalker.” She shoved him in the shoulder — not hard enough to roll him out of bed, but enough to reclaim the pillow he was hogging. “We’re looking for the _Falcon_. And a missing intelligence agent, apparently one lacking all rudiments of intelligence and survival instinct.”

Luke frowned. “Han is there?” At the wave of amusement from Mara, he clarified. “Because of the _Falcon_. Even you have to admit Han is—”

“Not as dumb as he looks,” Mara assented cheerfully. “But he did manage to lose his ship — and don’t think I won’t get that story out of him over a bottle of something expensive and highly toxic to most lifeforms.”

Luke paused to assimilate the new information. “And you think the _Falcon_ is on _Jakku_?”

“The connection didn’t occur to me until just now.” Mara shook her head. She must be more distracted than she thought. “Borkin’s last transmission was garbled, but remember I told you he said something about debris fields? I thought he was taking about a spacial hazard until the _Falcon_ came to mind. It’s hard to hide a ship that recognizable...”

“Unless it’s camouflaged by the rest of the garbage,” finished Luke. “Debris fields, junkyard, Jakku. Is that pretty much it?”

“That and what you asked me earlier about package deals. Two missing things in one place. It sounded more logical in my head,” admitted Mara.

“Hey, I’m not one to argue with the Force — or your intuition. But won’t it be a little hard to narrow down?”

Mara grimaced. “I know, searching for a piece of junk in a junkyard, needle in a stack of needles, blah blah blah. I thought I was supposed to be the fatalistic one in this relationship?” She froze and glanced at Luke. He studiously pretended not to notice her choice of words.

_You still have a terrible sabaac face_ , she whispered in his mind.

She felt Luke reach for calm, and smiled when it eluded his grasp. 

_Tsk-tsk_ , Mara chided him. _Reverting to old habits so soon?_

Her eyes widened at his mental response.

_I’m a bad influence on you, Skywalker._

He smirked. _Leia’s been saying that for years._

Mara smiled at the joke, but she caught the trace of wistfulness in his thought. “We’ll see Leia and Han soon,” she promised. “But don’t you want to see their faces when we show up with both the _Falcon_ and their missing spy in tow?”

“And maybe more than that.” Luke spoke slowly, his gaze unfocusing.

“Force vision?” Mara felt no foreboding, no flare of her finely honed danger sense.

“Just a feeling.” Luke rubbed his chin and looked surprised at finding bare flesh there. 

“Good feeling or bad feeling?” Mara asked.

His momentary reverie broken, Luke grinned at her. “I never thought I’d say this, but I have a really good feeling about going to Jakku.”

* * *

It wasn’t that easy, of course. It never was. Even on a nearly uninhabited planet, there were still formalities to be observed. Luke suspected the party the Lanai held in his honor was sedate compared to the celebration they would hold after he left. Mara attended as well, although in her words, “Being invited isn’t the same as being welcome.”

Given the prevalence of barnacles and snails in the Farewelling Feast, Luke wondered if she regretted the choice. She certainly did by the time the dancing started; the Force had been no help at all in coordinating Luke’s steps so they didn’t collide with or trod on Mara’s feet. He thought the Lanai were amused, but their facial expressions were hard to discern — except for annoyance. That was quite plain, and Luke had had ample opportunity to discern it.

Privately, he doubed Caretaker J’Nu and the other Lanai would miss him all that much. He had never been sociable, and the matrons of their order had strictly discouraged the younger Lanai from seeking him out. Now that he would be leaving soon, he caught a few of the novitiates gazing after him with soulful eyes not unlike those of the nesting porgs they half-tended, half-tolerated. Which, in turn, was not unlike how they treated Luke himself.

He smiled wryly. No, the Caretakers of the Sacred Tree of Ahch-To would not miss him much. If ever again he ran the danger of becoming too self-important, he could simply think of stooping over J’Nu’s winter harvest under her stern, walleyed supervision, and be cured.

Not that Mara would ever let him get a big head in the first place. The thought was oddly comforting.

“Left, right, spin, hop, left, slide, _right_ , Skywalker,” Mara growled. “Use those split concentration techniques and memory enhancements you’re always going on about, and stop trying to break my toes!”

“I’m not trying to,” he protested.

“But you’re succeeding anyway.”

Luke summoned some vestige of patience. “Then teach me.”

Mara halted in her tracks, forcing Luke into an awkward hop to avoid stepping on her toes yet again. “You don’t take instruction well.”

“Maybe I’ve changed.” Luke wasn’t sure why this was suddenly so important. Maybe he was just tired of being the Master. Maybe he wanted to prove to Mara that they were on equal footing, that they could learn from each other, even in small ways.

And maybe, he admitted, he was tired of looking like a fool in front of the woman he loved.

Mara studied his face. “Put your hands on my waist. Not _that_  low, farm boy, that’s a different kind of dance.”

To Luke’s surprise, and perhaps to Mara’s as well, she was a patient teacher. And Luke was a good student, picking up swiftly on the steps once they were shown slowly enough for him to follow and memorize the motion. Gradually, the Lanai widened their circle to include and then surround the two. Mara spun Luke into a frenetic version of the Corellian Reel, in which the woman always led and the man always tried to keep up. She threw in a couple Selonian strathspey skips, but they were so closely attuned to each other that Luke was able to follow with a passable imitation.

“It works better with a tail,” called Mara, laughing as they spun away from each other.

“I’ll remember that for next time!” Luke promised when he could catch his breath. It was a fitting culmination, he thought, of their long, slow dance toward and away from each other — a sudden, joyful coming together as partners.

The Lanai watched and slapped their webbed hands together and called out encouraging hoots and warbles.

It was ironic, given that this was his Farewelling Feast, but for the first time Ahch-To felt like home.

* * *

It was nearly dawn by the time they retired. The Lanai were still blowing their odd little flutes and dancing dizzying reels, but Luke and Mara had finally conceded defeat.

All around them, the little porgs were peeping and burbling greetings to each other as they woke.

“We could take a porg with us as a mascot,” Luke suggested as they left the village behind and walked back down the winding stone stairs. The broken stone steps were especially treacherous at night. Luke took Mara’s elbow solicitously; she jabbed hers in his side.

“Absolutely not. They are disgusting, pitiful, filthy little creatures—”

“They’re cute.”

Mara rolled her eyes. “You want to take a water bird to a desert planet? Fine. But not on my ship. You two can have a nice, cozy ride in your X-wing. That’s X for excrement, right?”

Luke made a face. “You have a point,” he finally admitted.

In a rare burst of exuberence and sentimentality, Mara tugged Luke into an improptu dance up the ramp and into the _Jade’s_   _Fire_. “How else do you want to celebrate your last night here?” she asked breathlessly as they spun to a stop.

“Wine?” suggested Luke. A bottle of something burgandy and expensive sailed towards him. “And... entertainment?” He sounded uncertain, but Mara was already inserting the last vid into the holo-projector. 

“It’s the last in the series,” she said. “Seems fitting. It’s a night for endings.”

Luke clinked his glass against hers. “And new beginnings.”

Wrapped up in each other, they soon forgot the Tales of the Jedi. The blocky words scrolled down the screen unheeded:

 

_Duke Starkiller, Master Jedi and Savior of the New Republic, has disappeared from the known reaches of the galaxy — but not for long. The lovely and deadly Tara Greenstone races to join his side, to once more form the galaxy’s most feared and revered team of Jedi, of freedom fighters, of Rebels, of blazing light to illumine a new era of darkness. Once joined together, this unstoppable dynamic duo will surely ignite a fire in the loins of the Resistance — and instill a burning passion to restore peace and justice to the galaxy..._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wish I'd had even more time for further adventures of Luke and Mara (and Duke and Tara), but I hope you enjoyed this small slice of Sequel-era Stuff remix!


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